International Coffeehouse: Italy

"Central Italy has countless fine Renaissance buildings, many of them concentrated in and around Florence. Their clear lines, elegant simplicity and harmonious proportions came out of a re-evaluation of the past. Turning their backs on the Gothic style, the architects of the Renaissance returned to Classical Rome for inspiration. Most of the large buildings had been started by the late 15th century, paid for by the Catholic Church or by powerful noble families, such as the Medici of Florence."

"Although the buildings of the northwest tend to be solid and imposing – a result partly of the more severe climate – there is no distinctive architectural stamp as there is around Venice, Florence, or even in Rome. Instead, a variety of buildings in different styles, many borrowed or reinterpreted from elsewhere, are dotted across the area: enchanting medieval castles, outstanding Romanesque and Gothic buildings, unusual Baroque structures. The northwest is also rich in modern architecture – in terms of both design and materials – influenced by the region’s industrial developments and its strong flair for innovative design, which also often draws its inspiration from earlier architectural styles."

"The Romanesque style of southern Italy owes much to the Normans, who in the 11th century brought from France both form and style in architecture and sculpture. In the southeast, the style has hefty Byzantine overtones; in Sicily it is characterized by strong traditional Islamic motifs and a love of rich color, pattern, and ornamentation. These elements surface later in Sicily’s Baroque style and are allied to a dynamism that originates in the Baroque of Rome – though in Sicily it is more vivacious. Neapolitan Baroque is more sophisticated and displays a greater interest in the creative use of space."

"Italian national cinema developed quickly between the last decade of the 19th century and the outbreak of World War I (particularly in Turin and also in Rome), and it won a sizeable share of film audiences around the world for, in particular, its epic films set in classical settings. The outbreak of the war virtually destroyed the industry, but with the coming of sound and the advent of the Fascist government, support for the industry grew before World War II broke out, with the building of the film studio complex at Cinecittà (“Cinema City”), the establishment of Luce (the government agency charged with producing documentaries and newsreels), and the opening of an important national film school in Rome, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Unlike its counterparts in totalitarian Russia or Germany, the Italian industry was not completely dominated by government propaganda, and in fact some of the major Fascist figures in the industry wanted to imitate the entertainment of Hollywood rather than support a completely ideological cinema. Major directors emerged during this period, such as Mario Camerini, Alessandro Blasetti, and Vittorio De Sica (all of whom continued to work after the end of the war), and the cinema during the Fascist period trained a great many people involved in basic film production who were to play a vital role in the dramatic rebirth of Italian cinema after 1945. With the end of the war, Italian neorealism burst on the international scene. Such figures as Roberto Rossellini, De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Giuseppe De Santis won international acclaim for their “realistic” portrayal of contemporary Italian social and economic problems. During the 1950s, many young directors (Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Pietro Germi among them) sought to move beyond the kind of programmatic social realism Marxist critics in Italy and France championed, and in the 1960s a second generation of even younger figures (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Francesco Rosi) looked both backward to their Italian neorealist heritage and abroad to French cinema for inspiration." Read more

"The style of art found in Italy after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Antique motifs continued but were gradually replaced by Christian imagery and the influence, especially in Ravenna and Venice, of Byzantine art and architecture. The romanesque style of the 11th and 12th centuries gave way to the gothic in the 13th century. A truly Italian art developed in the late-13th and 14th centuries, when the foundations of Renaissance art were laid by Giotto, Duccio, and the sculptor Nicola Pisano. Independent styles arose in regional centres, especially in Florence (which dominated the 15th century), Venice (where the Venetian school was founded by the Bellini family), and Rome. The giants of the Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and the Venetians Giorgione and Titian dominated the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Their work merged into mannerism, exemplified by the architect Giulio Romano, the painter Parmigianino, and in Venice the painters Tintoretto and Veronese. Mannerism gave way around 1600 to the baroque, the outstanding Italian exponents of which worked in Rome: the architects Bernini (also a sculptor) and Borromini, and the painter Caravaggio. After the 17th century Italian art lost its impetus, except in Venice, where it briefly flowered in the 18th century with the work of Canaletto, Guardi, and Tiepolo. Outstanding Italian painters of the modern period are Modigliani and de Chirico."